WORLD CUP WITHOUT THE PEOPLE, WE’RE BACK ON THE STREET! The May 15th Manifesto

The Popular Committee of São Paulo for the FIFA World Cup, an horizontal articulation composed by social movements, collectives and individual activists, is denouncing basic human rights violations since 2011, strengthening the resistance against the State’s violence, intensified by the FIFA World Cup 2014. On May 15th, “International Day of FIFA World Cup Resistance”, the groups undersigned here will take the streets at 5 P.M (Brasília time) at Ciclista Square (Paulista Avenue, nº 2400). In this manifesto, we show why we fight and what we want; with one month short of the World Cup, we’re in the streets again to demand our rights, including our freedom of expression. There are 11 causes in game:

1) We want to remember that popular victories are always a conquest of the streets, either in strikes, protests, occupations or other legitimate ways of manifestation and political action. The freedom of expression, manifestation and reunion constitutes a fundamental right for democracy’s effectiveness (Federal Constituition – Article 5). 50 years after the corporative and military coup d’état, the freedom of expression is still threatened, limited, forbidden or even relativized on behalf “public order”. To ensure that we can demand our rights and contest the actual capitalist regime, first of all the right to occupy public streets must be guaranteed.

The State’s violent and authoritarian response to social conflicts, showing the political forces as the sole ‘mediator’, in addition to result into the aggravation of these conflicts, violates civil and political liberties, intimidating people to shut up – and impose on everyone a single world reality. In three years of mobilization against the World Cup, there wasn’t any opening for the dialogue or any proposal to repair violated rights on behalf of the city hall, state and federal governors, despite the high number of meetings and public hearings on which we demanded information about the projects and more popular participation in the process. Today, the FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE WORLD CUP IS OUR FIRST CAUSE, and for it we’re back on the streets, where we’ll fight for our rights.
The threat to limit the right to expression is carried by numerous legislation bills that move between Congress and the Judiciary, such as the PL 508 and PL 499. In this voting process of projects that typifies the crime of terrorism and limits the right to free expression, not only the acts that question the FIFA World Cup are threatened. With just one movement of the pen, all social movements may end up classified as terrorists, in a clear attempt to silence the voices of the streets through the criminalization of popular struggles. We condemn and demand the immediate filing of all legislation bills that create a state of exception within democracy.

2) It’s impressive the advance of the armed wing of the State in all spheres of government: from the Metropolitan Civil Guard (GCM) to the National Security Force (NSF) and the Armed Forces, through the Military Police (PM), with its practices of dictatorship and its pair, the “Civil” Police, they all receive billionaire contributions in equipment and weapons, infrastructure, troops, soldiers, surveillance and monitoring. The investment of U.S. $ 2 billion in security for the megaevent is the most frightening expense: against which enemy it will be used?
We watched the violent scenes played by the PM in open streets, widespread since June 2013, with mass arrests of protesters, including an investigation of the DEIC, that has already interrogated more than 300 people for taking part in acts and ordered dozens to appear in police stations at the exact time of the protests. The creation of “special” courts to prosecute faster the protesters that will be arrested, or even to judge strikes (and thus prevent the struggle of the workers), has already been announced. Fighting is not a crime! We demand the end of political interrogations and special courts, guaranteeing the right to a full defense and to the right to strike, which are in the Constitution!
On the streets, the PM prohibits the right to free expression and performs “detention for investigation”, which violates the Federal Constitution of 1988. The escort pattern made by the PM, with one cop to one protestor, is not needed during the manifestations. Terrorist is the State! Our protest is peaceful and our struggle is legitimate! We’ll not be silenced! We demand the demilitarization of the police, the key to build a more fair and democratic society, leaving behind the shadows of an authoritarian and criminal state.
3) The authorities’ threat is consolidated through standards already in place, such as the World Cup General Law, approved in 2012, which allows the creation of 2 kilometers-wide exclusion zones around the stadiums and official areas chosen to broadcast the games. In these sites, just the offical sponsors can comercialize products (protected by a military siege), following a city decree of April 2014, which has forbidden the work of non-authorized hawkers in FIFA’s exclusion zones (Itaquera and downtown). It means that to circulate in these areas, it’s necessary to have a ticket or credencial issued by FIFA and the public areas’ control will be made by the sponsors, who won bids to the public broadcasts: the privatization of the public space is already a reality. This institutional apparatus serves only one interest: grant the monopoly and a high profit for the 20 sponsor enterprises and for FIFA, privatizing the public space to exclude the people in a hygienist operation unprecedented. 138 thousand hawkers are forbidden to work during the event, and take serious risks to be in jail if they try to do so. We demand the right to work for the hawkers before, during and after de World Cup, in the same conditions of the Fan Fest made by the sponsor enterprises!

4) If it was not enough the lack of work conditions in the construction industry, with an average of one deceased worker by day (it was 471 in 2011), 12 workers have died in the stadiums’ construction sites in the last three years. In São Paulo, Odebrecht is responsible for the death of three workers at the Itaquerão Arena, all because they trade the employees’ security for the rush to finish the already delayed work. The Ministry of Labor recently affirmed that if this stadium was not for the World Cup, it would be already interdicted for lack of security. We require lifelong pension for families of the workers killed and disabled in accidents, besides the responsabilization of the construction enterprises!

5) Without dialogue and a single public hearing, about 250 thousand people were removed or are threatened by forced removal from their homes by megaevents in Brazil. In São Paulo, property repossessions, evictions and arson happen every day in the city’s slums to guarantee the advance of housing speculation over the life of thousands of families, with billions in profits for the construction companies benefited by the World Cup. The Cup’s legacy in the neighbourhood of Itaquera is a sharp rise in the rental prices and the consequent exodus of its inhabitants for more distant areas. On the grassroots, new occupations show the resistance to this process and the size of the housing deficit in the city, that has over 5 million individuals living in inadequate conditions or in the streets. We demand the immediate relocation, from house to house, of all evicted families, with decent structure, and the end of all evictions and forced removals until living conditions are guaranteed for all of them!

6) In São Paulo, about 20 thousand people are homeless and suffer violence from the city guard and the military police every day in the city streets: they have their possessions confiscated and are taken to shelters that resemble concentration camps, under inadequate nutrition, hygiene and accommodation. With the World Cup, the State wants to get rid of homeless people in the city’s center, so the repression against them grows day by day. Homeless people are the first to be eliminated from the World Cup! We demand the end of institutional violence against the homeless, the right to come and go freely, and the right to remain in public spaces. As well as public policies to provide work and decent shelters.

7) Thousands of children, adolescents, women and the LGBT population suffer physical abuse in the networks of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. With the World Cup, sexual tourism is on the rise and there has already been reports of children being prostituted in the area of the Itaquera stadium. We demand serious policies of prevention and combat against sexual exploitation and human trafficking, with campaigns in public schools, hotels, stadium areas and touristic places, including the habilitation of tourism professionals and the strengthening of policies that promote women, children, adolescent and LGBT rights.

8) Presented as the greatest legacy of the World Cup for the Brazilian population, the investment in urban transports has never fulfilled what was promised. This missing legacy consists of over 60 projects announced between 2010 and 2013 for the host cities of the World Cup. More than a third was cut off the list by the governments, remaining 42 of them. It means that almost 3 billion reais were prevented from being invested. But the public resources tied to the football stadium followed an opposed direction: from the initial 5,6 billion they sky-rocketed for more than 8 billion reais. We demand public investment to promote decent and free public transport, regulated by the people, to meet the daily needs of the workers and the right to the city. Free Fare now!

9) FIFA was gifted by the National Congress with a law that concedes full tax exemption to the entity and its commercial partners, what means that FIFA will profit, alone an estimated value of 10 billion reais with the World Cup of 2014. We demand the cancellation of this law and a public analysis of the sovereign debt in the three levels of government, in a way that enables the investigation and publication of all the data related to public spending in megaevents and megaprojects, with the intention to revert the debt legacy provoked by FIFA’s World Cup. We will not pay for it!

10) With the World Cup, contemporary football became even more a thing for the elites. Stadiums were turned into arenas that look more like shopping malls, with expensive tickets and the imposition of a new way of supporting your team, without flags and percussion instruments, which is part a process that extinguishes the presence of the popular organized supporters. The police first started practicing repression tactics, “non-lethal” and surveillance equipments during football matches against the supporters. We don’t want to be just consumers of football through the television, nor treated as criminals! We demand popular prices and respect to the organized supporters in Brazil, and the end the criminalization of this segment. Football is ours, CBF and FIFA do not own it!

11) The broadcasting of the matches and the opening ceremony of the World Cup was guaranteed with exclusivity for the Rede Globo network, a FIFA partner, that also benefits from tax exemption and the monopoly in the event’s public exhibitions, also known as “fan fests”. This television network was born and nurtured during the dictatorship era and has ever since had the public permission to “inform” the population. It also practices tax evasion and benefits from public funds, all this while manipulates the facts to maintain the social control and the power of corporations that announce in the TV’s commercial breaks. We demand the democratization of the media, starting with a revision of its regulatory laws, including a revision of the current legislation concerning community radio stations, to guarantee that communication becomes a human right in practice, to give voice to a diverse, popular and unbiased reality of the Brazilian people. We stand for respect to all the media activists and the independent, popular press.
#World Cup without the people, we’re back on the streets again
# World Cup for whom?
# TheTroops’ World Cup
# There will be resistance